Notorious ‘terminator’ gang boss killed after surviving three homicide bids

Krsto ‘Terminator’ Vujić, a senior figure in Montenegro’s Škaljari organised crime gang who survived three previous assassination attempts, has died days after being shot

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Krsto ‘Terminator’ Vujić has died(Image: As Ever)

A high-ranking member of a notorious crime clan has died after previously surviving three assassination attempts. Krsto “Terminator” Vujić, one of the leaders of the Škaljari clan, the most powerful and violent criminal organisations in the Balkans, was killed on Saturday (April 18), four days after an assassination attempt on him in Spain.

Ognjen Radić, his lawyer from Belgrade, Serbia, who represented him in proceedings brought against him before the Higher Court in Podgorica, confirmed his death. According to official information, Vujić had previously been targeted three times.

The violence surrounding Vujić took a darker turn in 2016, when his then three-year-old son was also wounded in an attack. Regional reports say the attempt on Vujić’s life happened in Meljine, near Herceg Novi in Montenegro, after a remote-controlled bomb was planted under his parked car.

The device was detonated just as Vujić was approaching or getting into the vehicle with his son.

Both Vujić and the child were injured in the blast, but survived. The incident has often been described by local media and investigators as a moment when the Balkan underworld feud “crossed a line” by dragging family, and even children, into the firing line.

A year later, Vujić was targeted again in Meljine, when an attacker reportedly opened fire from a moving motorcycle. Reports say he escaped that encounter and the gunman got away.

He was later shot once more at his family home in Meljine while he was with his mother, wife and two young children. Investigators suspected a sniper rifle was used, with Vujić hit in the thigh.

Despite the injury, his condition was not believed to be life-threatening and he survived after receiving treatment. Vujić, who was nicknamed “Terminator” in criminal circles, has been described in Balkan media as a senior figure in the Škaljari clan, a Montenegrin organised crime group locked in a long-running feud with its rivals, the Kavač clan.

He was also reported to be a close associate of fugitive Igor Vukotić. An international arrest warrant was issued in connection with the murder of Šćepan Roganović, a man from the coastal town of Herceg Novi in Montenegro, and Vujić was said to have been wanted for five years over the killing.

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Roganović, the brother of alleged Kavač clan figure Duško Roganović, was shot dead on a stairwell near the Kanli Kula fortress in Herceg Novi in February 2020. In court proceedings linked to the case, a defendant from Vukotić’s alleged criminal group who later became a cooperating witness claimed: “Krsto Vujić told me that the Roganovićs tried to kill him and that he would spend everything he had to get rid of them.”

The witness said he acted as an accomplice in the Roganović murder. The Roganović family had already suffered a string of attacks.

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